


Bittersweet

by QueenOfBelmair



Series: Beauty and the Beasts [1]
Category: Antisepticeye - Fandom, Darkiplier - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF, jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: A little Danti if you squint, Blood, Creepy Anti is creepy, Eye Trauma, F/M, Gore, Knives, Part one is backstory, Prequel, Torture, Violence, i'm fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-19 11:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11896458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfBelmair/pseuds/QueenOfBelmair
Summary: Her tongue tried its best to mirror his, swiping in his mouth to find every corner, every crevice. The hands were moving back down again, stopping at her throat. Squeezing lightly as he pressed his body against hers. Squeezing harder. Harder.“Jack…l-let go, that hurts.”Harder, harder. Belle was beginning to feel lightheaded, and all the warmth that had previously occupied her veins was replaced with ice.“C’mon, that’s not funny, let go.”“Shut up.”





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> When I asked my girlfriend for input on this, she said, "Get fucked up." So I did.

_J – You still coming to meet me tonight? You’ve got an hour to back out if you’ve realized what a shit date I’ll probably be ;p_

_B – Shut up ;p I’m actually almost ready, are you sure you don’t want to back out?_

_J – You’re too pretty to back out_

“Oh my god Belle, quit texting him and do your hair! Or you really will be late.”

Belle winked at her roommate and let her hair down from the bun it was drying in. After three months of talking to Jack over text and online, they were finally going to meet. She’d written the idea of online dating off as desperate when she’d first (reluctantly) made the profile, but had found it a lot easier to connect with someone when she could narrow things down with a few clicks of her mouse.

They’d both recently moved to the city, enjoyed trying out new bars, and used questionable street food to cure hangovers. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t a sucker for his green hair and the minimalist ink decorating his arm. Those were the types of boys she always fawned over when she was young and the type of men she had always dated in her adult years.

Several minutes of makeup and several more of putting the finishing touches on her outfit and she was ready to leave. Sarah, ever the mother-hen, flitted around her as she put on a jacket and grabbed a small purse.

“Now, I’m not going to lecture you about leaving drinks alone and shit like that. But make sure you have a knife, and remember all the streets you’re on. I tried to do my pre-date internet creeping but I couldn’t find his profile. How do you spell his last name again? I think I mixed up some letters.”

“Sarah,” Belle grabbed either side of Sarah’s face, affectionately giving her cheeks a squeeze, “I swear to god, you precious soul, you can call every cop in town if I’m not back by 2 AM.”

With a peck on the cheek and a playful wink, Belle was out the door.

 

 

“I can’t believe that you’re Irish and you’ve never had a whiskey sour!”

“Is that racist? I think that’s somehow racist.”

Belle took another swig of her drink. Jack smiled, blue eyes watching her lips move with every sip.

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘xenophobic.’ Because honey, you’re very, very white.”

Several drinks had been downed between them, the atmosphere becoming more relaxed as they revealed more about themselves. Belle liked his high-pitched laugh and he said that her hair looked like she’d just been to the beach. He took another drink of the cocktail in his glass and shook his head.

“It’s all an illusion, I’m afraid. Under this pasty white skin beats the heart of a sunkissed god.”

“Well…how do you feel about getting a little moonkissed and getting out of here?”

The words felt unnatural even as she said them, but tonight she felt daring. And why not? Approaching all of her previous encounters with the opposite sex with a repeating pattern had gotten her nowhere. This night wasn’t going to end with a peck on the lips and a pat on the shoulder. Not if she could help it.

Jack grinned and downed what was left of his drink. “You know what? Yeah. Maybe we could walk off the drinks for a little bit, try a bar a few blocks away? Never been there, but I hear it’s good. The Right Fox, I think? Makes you wonder what happened to the Left Fox. Was he not good enough to get an establishment named after himself?”

The liquor was making her too giddy not to laugh at that, no matter how corny. Jack offered to pay for their drinks, and although it was a bit old fashioned, Belle let him. She took the thin but defined arm that was offered to her and they left the bar, remaining arm in arm as they walked down the sidewalk. The streets were beginning to get a bit vacant, their fellow bar-rats their only company. Had they been out that long? Belle was so used to coming home early due to failed dates that she hadn’t realized…well, how much fun she was actually having. Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

_S – It’s 1:30 now. Still alive?_

_B – Belle isn’t here. She’s my new host body._

_S – Fuckin hilarious >=(_

_B – We’re having a great time. I’m actually probably going to break my self-imposed curfew. See you in the morning!_

“So, what makes someone want to leave Ireland to come all the way out here to the West Coast?”

“Travel opens you up to all kinds of things. I’ve been a few other places as well, just didn’t settle there. America is…unique. There’s a little bit of everything here, I guess. You’ve got some flaws over here, yeah, but there’s sights and smells here you can’t get elsewhere. Tastes, even.”

“Tastes?”

Ducking into an alley, Jack gently pushed her up against the brick wall, frame towering over her as he cupped her chin. A soft thumb ran over her bottom lip. “Mhmm. Don’t you know that American girls kiss different than Irish girls?”

Belle laughed softly. “Can’t say I’ve kissed any Irish girls to know that.”

“How about Irish guys?”

His forehead was touching hers now. Eyes of icy fire stared into hers. Her response came out a lot breathier than she intended.

“No, can’t say that I have.”

Belle silently thanked herself that she’d skipped the copious amounts of chap stick she normally coated her lips in before dates. Chapped lips were one of her weird first kiss fears. Without it, she could truly taste his lips on hers, and he could taste hers. Her tart, citrusy mouth met with his; smoother, earthier. Heat slithered slowly through her veins as his hands found her hips, pressing her harder against the brick as his tongue slipped past her lips, soaking up ever lemon-flavored drop.

Belle couldn’t control her hands, and found that they’d traveled up Jack’s back and woven their fingers through his hair while they kissed. The strands were soft, a bit too much, perhaps from a recent dye job. The strong grip moved up from her hips to her shoulders, up her neck to cup her face.

_Holy shit, who kisses like this?_

Her tongue tried its best to mirror his, swiping in his mouth to find every corner, every crevice. The hands were moving back down again, stopping at her throat. Squeezing lightly as he pressed his body against hers. Squeezing harder. Harder.

“Jack…l-let go, that hurts.”

Harder, harder. Belle was beginning to feel lightheaded, and all the warmth that had previously occupied her veins was replaced with ice.

“C’mon, that’s not funny, let go.”

“Shut up.”

Two simple words, and they hit her like a truck. She kept her composure though, her now unoccupied left hand sliding to her back pocket and pulling out the knife Sarah had bought her. It flipped open easily in her familiar hand and she held it up against his throat.

“Real funny asshole. Now let go, I’m done with this date.”

He showed no signs of letting her go, making her press the knife harder against his flesh. He simply grinned down at her, so she took action. A lot of people were afraid to use the self-defense they carried, but not Belle. She removed the knife from his throat and plunged it down into his shoulder with no hesitation. What she expected was for him to let go of her so she could get somewhere safe.

What she didn’t expect was nothing to change.

Jack’s grip didn’t falter, but he did glance at the protruding annoyance. Red was blossoming out in a tiny circle from where it had made contact, but he was completely unfazed. Still silent, he brought one hand up from Belle’s neck to her mouth and used to other to drag him deeper into the alley with her.

“You know, I’m sick of people scarring up my host. The wounds, they heal, but the scars stay behind. It’s annoying.”

 _Great job Belle, you picked not only a potential murderer, but a psycho. Excellent skill, you should put it on your resume_.

Belle would not let herself go out this way. With all the strength she had, she used one of her hands to punch Jack as hard in the ear as she could. It did exactly as she hoped, catching him off guard and causing him to lose his grip on her. Without looking back she ran as fast as her legs would carry, not even bothering to try ducking into buildings. She lived twelves blocks from here, she could make it on foot. Hell, she could run the whole way if she gunned it without thinking.

After three blocks everything burned. Her neck, her feet, even the air seemed to be rippling with heat around her. Every single breath felt like she was inhaling a mouthful of sandpaper, but she had to press on. It didn’t matter if Jack wasn’t behind her, it didn’t even matter that she left her knife behind. She’d get a new one.

Belle didn’t even realize there was someone in front of her until they collided. She should have had plenty of time to see him, but her mind was so focused on getting home that her eyes were practically useless.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down there! Where’s the fire?”

“Sorry, sorry! I just…I wanted to get home. I didn’t realize how fast I was going.”

“Most people don’t sprint home at nearly two in the morning. Are you all right?”

She took a second to step back and survey whoever it was she’d so rudely crashed into. An elegant mess of waves and curls obscured a bit of his face, and despite her nearly knocking him off his feet the suit he was wearing was so crisp it might as well have been straight off the rack. He helped her steady herself, and she chanced a glance behind her. Jack was nowhere around.

“I…I was on a date and he went a little crazy on me. I was just trying to get away.”

The man shook his head, brushing an invisible piece of dust from his shoulder. “That’s such a shame. To think that young men these days can act like such brutes. Call me old fashioned, but I believe courting someone should always involve a gentle hand.”

It was a weird comment, but at least he was being polite. She let out a slow breath before looking over her shoulder one more.

This time Jack was walking calmly up the sidewalk, as if he hadn’t just been stabbed in the shoulder.

“Shit, that’s him. Do you have a car or something? Or an apartment I can hide out in for a couple hours?”

The man looked up the street at Jack, glanced down at Belle, then looked back up at Jack again, once again shaking his head.

“This is who you’ve been hunting? She’s so…jumpy.”

“Well she didn’t start out that way. I had it in the bag before she tried to take a chunk out of me.”

There was a strong grip on her arm suddenly, stronger than Jack’s. The man had taken hold of her, and this time she didn’t have anything to defend herself with. How could this possibly be happening? How could what she thought was her savior and her attacker be in league with each other?

Jack got closer to her, grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking her head back. When she looked back into his eyes, she audibly gasped. Gone were the blues she had been looking at all night. What looked back at her was nothing but an abyss, shiny and dark like an insect. The air around him was different. Hot and uncomfortable, like it had been as she tried to make her escape. The biggest difference, even more than the eyes, was his neck. There was a disgustingly fresh looking gash running across it, deep and still oozing.

How?

She turned her gaze to the man holding her. Where the air around Jack was hot and chaotic, the vibes coming off this man were all ice and calm fury. His eyes, like Jack’s had changed. When she first looked at him, they’d been a dark cinnamon color, but now his irises were pitch black, surrounded by red and blue that looked like…glitching?

“She’s soft at least. Aren’t you, dear?”

The glitching man stroked Belle’s cheek, which caused her to lash out and slap his. Rather than Jack, who had reacted as soon as Belle had retaliated, this man simple reached a hand up to the spot, rubbing it gently before backhanding her so hard she felt her neck crack.

“That was rude. I will only use a gentle hand with you if you do the same for me. My partner here, however, well…he is a bit more unpredictable. You’d do best to listen to be a dear and let things happen. You may even survive the night.”

She was too stunned to do anything as she was dragged off to another alley. This one, unlike the first, was a dead end. With two people who towered over her and without her knife, she didn’t stand a chance. Her biggest hope was that she might, as the unnamed man had put it, “survive the night.”

Jack…could she even call him that anymore? This was not the man she’d talked to about childhood pets and breaking her wrist on a hike with her college roommate. Now he was giggling like a madman, slipping her knife out of his back pocket and holding it up so that it caught the light.

“This is cute, I’ll admit. Stung like a bitch. But it’s not my style.”

Despite the comment, he pocketed it before reaching into the waistband of his jeans and pulling out a much larger knife. This one had a sturdy handle that had clearly been worn with use and a blade with a small, delicate hook on the end. Belle recognized it as one meant for gutting animals.

The suited man kicked her legs out from underneath her suddenly. Her phone screen crunched underneath her bottom as she hit the pavement, and both men were quickly on her. The suited man pinned her arms down above her head while Jack sat on her legs, idly twirling the knife.

“You know, I’ve been doing this a long time. Longer than your pathetic life. Humanity has come up with a lot of interesting ways to end each other over the years. This one though? It’s my favorite. See, the point is sharp to break skin…”

As he spoke, he drew the blade down her sweater. The fabric tore as if was paper. He repeated the action, this time drawing it along her skin; the effect was the same. It seemed as though Belle’s voice had been snatched away until that point, where she couldn’t help but let out a scream of pain. Jack quickly glanced up at his partner, whose hands slipped down to Belle’s face. He stroked it tenderly, almost lovingly, before gripping her jaw tightly. Was he going to hold her mouth shut, keep her from crying for help?

“It only lasts a moment if you stay still.”

With one shift movement he snapped her jaw to the side. Then those same hands went back to stroking her cheeks before he pinned her arms back down.

Tears immediately welled up in Belle’s eyes, burning and pouring in rivers down her cheeks. She wanted to scream until her lungs exploded, but this time it really did seem that every breath had been sucked straight from her. She struggled to inhale, drawing in gulpfuls of fire and blood. Jack simply smiled and went back to twirling the knife.

“As I was saying, this point is great for slicing the skin. That’s my favorite, see? The way the blood bubbles up, practically gets me rock fucking hard.”

Another slice was made from her navel to the hollow of her throat. The same lips that had kissed her so passionately what seemed like moments ago leaned down, pressing a kiss to the marred skin before licking a stripe up the cut. He moaned as blood filled his mouth, slurping it like a child with a mouthful of soup.

Belle stared hopelessly up at the night sky as Jack’s blade continued its work. He cut the fabric of her bra in half, pushing the fabric aside to reveal her to the night air. The act of seeing her breasts did nothing to him. All he wanted was more access to his canvas. The man holding her smiled, kissing her forehead tenderly.

“Don’t worry, he’s always favored blades. He knows what he’s doing.”

Clearly, he did. Every cut was deep enough to make her bleed but not enough to cause internal damage. Listening to him lapping at her blood like a dog made bile rise in her throat that she dared not let come up. She could barely swallow the mix of blood and spit pooling in the back of her mouth.

The cuts were becoming smaller, but they were in more delicate areas now. Around her nipples, across her jawbone, he even slipped off her shoes and kept his eyes locked with hers while he made a slit between each of her toes.

“Now, if I just wanted to bleed you out I’d just cut you from cunt to throat, have my taste, and ditch what was left of you. But this is a two man operation, isn’t it handsome? That’s where the other feature of this handy little tool comes in.”

Jack winked at the other man, making a show of flipping the blade over and offering the handle. Before taking it he removed a pure white handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the knife clean from tip to handle. The two of them swapped places, and Belle closed her eyes. This man had broken her jaw as easily as swatting a fly. Whatever he was going to do her, she didn’t want to see it happen.

The option to block things out was quickly taken from her. Jack growled like an animal and dug his fingernails into the cuts on her face. A pitiful moan spilled past her lips, sounding more like a cat than a human in pain, and her eyes snapped back open.

“You’re going to watch, or I’ll cut your fuckin’ eyelids off.”

The man’s bizarre glitching eyes regarded her thoughtfully before he ran a few fingers over one of the deeper cuts Jack had made, in her thigh. The thin fabric of her leggings had ripped with no resistance.

“Once, long ago, one of my hosts was a butcher’s son. I picked up a lot of my skill there. Nowadays there isn’t as much finesse to the art, but I’d like to think I help keep the old ways alive.”

A fresh batch of tears ran down over Belle’s drool and blood soaked cheeks as the man dug his fingers into the wound. Carefully he pulled it open, choosing a spot carefully before inserting the knife into the flesh and hooking it into the meat of her leg before pulling back hard. A chunk of her came back with the blade, and before she could process it he was going in for round two.

“My companion feeds on the physical. The life blood that keeps your kind going. Practically makes him drunk, that can get very annoying. I, contrarywise, feed on something a little more elegant. Your fear will keep me sated for quite some time.”

He abandoned her leg, his hand sliding up to her exposed breasts. Again he pulled open the cut and dug in. This time there was no bone resistance, only the soft flesh. Unlike her leg, he picked up where Jack had left off, slicing through and humming a tune. Somewhere in the back of her head Belle recalled historical figures whose breasts had been cut off as a form of punishment and humiliation. Had they just sliced them clean off like they did with people’s heads in the guillotine?

This man, it seemed, was not interested in speed, but in accuracy. He was taking his time, considering each incision that he made and handling the pieces of her flesh that he removed with care as he set them aside.

Every bone in Belle’s body screamed at her to give up. Jack had let go of her arms, sensing the lack of fight in her, and had begun squeezing some of the marks he’d left in an attempt to get more blood to come to the surface. Maybe there was no point in trying to survive. Both men were so content in their tasks that she wasn’t sure they would ever stop so long as she was warm.

The night sky above her was so inviting, so welcoming. If she gave in to the dark she wouldn’t hurt anymore. Sarah would make sure they didn’t dress her in anything tacky for her burial, that she was sure of. She’d probably even make sure Belle’s hair was perfectly smoothed down before the put the silk pillow under her head.

The emptiness of the night was suddenly interrupted by a whistle.

No, not a whistle. A series of whistles, varying in pitch and distance.

Both men stopped immediately. The man on top of her, who had remained so calm throughout everything suddenly grabbed Jack by his collar, bringing the two of them nose to nose.

“Beauties? You idiot, you said there weren’t any in the area!”

“I checked for months, I didn’t find any trace of those bitches!”

“Well you were clearly very, very wrong weren’t you?”

He pushed Jack aside like an unwanted toy and smoothed his unruly hair away from his face. The point of the knife was wiped clean once more.

“You were very soft and delicate, little one. It’s a shame we have to end the fun here.”

He inspected the knife once more before handing it back to Jack. Jack scowled, mumbling something about how he’d done his research before shaking his head and flashing the knife at Belle once and stabbing it through her left eye. She and one of her cousins had once squished grapes in their fingers on the back porch in the heat of summer, giggling about how they felt like eyeballs. They’d been wrong, so wrong. Her eye popped like a bag filled with pus. Jack raised a knife to take out the other eye but a bullet whizzed through the air and passed through his wrist, causing him to drop the knife with a clatter.

The weight of the unnamed man left her body as he and Jack disappeared into the dark of the night. Could it be true? Or had the predators simply been chased off by someone with bigger fangs?

“Hey, we’ve got one here. Still breathing.”

Heavy shoes crunched on the gravel towards her. Whoever it was stopped at her battered body and leaned down.

This person’s energy didn’t ripple with darkness. On the contrary, the woman now accessing her didn’t have any sort of strange air around her at all. She seemed…normal.

“Hey there. You look like you’ve seen better days. C’mere Lola, we might have a chance with this one. She’ll make it if we’re lucky.”

If Belle could sigh in relief, she would. Several arms picked her up off the ground, causing pain to shoot anywhere it already wasn’t. Belle couldn’t care less. Whoever these strangers were, they were going to help her. A thought hit her, and a choked noise that was meant to be a laugh came out of her crime scene of a face.

The man hadn’t lied to her.

She may very well survive the night.


End file.
